


Finally Winning Out

by donutsweeper



Category: Down in the Library Basement - Rona Vaselaar | sleepyhollow_101
Genre: Five Minute Fandom, Gen, Libraries, Literary References & Allusions, Movie Quotation(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-17 05:45:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13070364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/donutsweeper/pseuds/donutsweeper
Summary: There are a lot of libraries out there in the world. Cassie isn't even remotely surprised to find out others are as interestingly occupied as hers.





	Finally Winning Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [escritoireazul](https://archiveofourown.org/users/escritoireazul/gifts).



Technically, it was after hours when the phone rang but only just and since I was at the desk anyway I picked it up before it could switch over to voicemail. 

"Good evening—" I began, but I didn't even have a chance to finish my typical greeting before I was interrupted.

"Is this Cassie?" the caller asked, sounding nervous and out of breath.

The voice wasn't one I recognized but that wasn't unusual, since it was typically me or mom that answered the phone here and nearly everyone knew it. "Yes?" 

"Oh good, I'm glad I caught you. This is Martha over at the Roosevelt branch in Minneapolis."

Huh. Getting calls from other librarians was pretty routine, but usually smaller branches called their main library for help, not an equally tiny library well out of the metro area. "How can I help you? Do you need me to check if we have something for interlibrary loan?" It was a guess, but I thought a pretty good one. MNLINK worked pretty well overall, but it wasn't always accurate or up to date so some librarians liked to call to ensure the book in question was actually borrowable before their patron made the request.

"No," Martha paused before continuing in a rush, "actually it was Clark who suggested I call you? He mentioned that you might be familiar with unusual kinds of... protection that libraries sometimes find themselves acquiring?" 

Between the way Martha stressed the word 'protection,' not to mention the way she purposely name dropped Clark, I suddenly had a very good idea what I was actually being asked about. "Protections, or guardians if you will, do come in all shapes and sizes. In fact, a lot of libraries, at least around here in Rock County, have found them very helpful."

"From my talk with Clark though, it sounded like there might be different kinds of … that the guardians over by you might be slightly different than the ones here? And, um, less like Charlotte and more like the Cheshire Cat? Do you think that could be possible?"

A Cheshire Cat? Now that sounded interesting. Deciding to drop the pretense, I just out right asked, "Are you telling me you have some kind of ghost cat living in your library's basement?"

Martha tittered a bit at that, but let out a relieved breath. "Sort of? Well, in the back stacks anyway, there's not much of a basement here."

"Huh. Okay." I don't think I'd ever been to the Roosevelt library, but my dim recollections of the Twin Cities' libraries was that unlike the county ones in the outer ring suburbs most of the ones within the cities themselves were in pretty old buildings so maybe they had more places for something unusual to hide. "So how long has it been there and how much trouble is it causing? How old is your library? Did you guys have renovations lately?"

"Ummm, the building's from the '20s, we're on the National Register of Historic Places actually, but it was pretty much completely remodeled about five years ago. I have no idea what things were like before then since I only started here after it reopened."

I pulled the chair over and plunked my butt down since I had a feeling this was going to take a while. It was nice weather at least, so hopefully Jo and Pip weren't going to mind it too much if the further adventures of The Pushcart War began a little later than usual tonight. "Have you talked about it with any of the other librarians there? What do they say?"

"Well, we're only open three days a week so it's just two clerks, a page, and me on staff with Ibrahim filling in for me when I can't come in. And this isn't the easiest kind of thing you can just bring up, you know? Jack and Ibrahim, well, I did try to see if they'd heard or seen anything but neither of them seemed to know what I was talking about and Margo's just a kid and Carol, well, Carol is the sweetest person I've ever met, but she wouldn't notice if the stuffed animals in the children's section all came to life and performed a conga line right in front of her."

I made some sort of 'mmm-hmmm' noise when she paused to let her know I was still listening.

"At first I thought I was just getting forgetful or maybe one of the others was pranking me. I mean, everything would be properly shelved when I locked up on Tuesday night but when I'd come in to open up on Thursday stuff would be moved around. Not a big deal, but, annoying, you know? And then it started getting weirder… There would be pens on the floor and every morning at least one of the computer mouses will have been pulled from their ports and any pile of books that were left in a stack will have been knocked over. I couldn't figure it out. I've worked in old buildings before, and I didn't see any of the typical signs of some sort of mouse or bug problem, but I just didn't have any idea what else it could be."

"So what happened?" I ask, because obviously something did or Martha wouldn't be calling me.

"Remember that big storm that blew through here a few weeks ago?"

Did I ever. Mom and I spent the whole night in the basement since the warnings about it had been so dire. We wound up having a pretty fun time, all things considered. Pip and Jo both got a good brushing and we managed to get through a good chunk of Jacob Have I Loved. It turned out the weather channel had misjudged things a little and while most of Minnesota got hit pretty hard the southwest corner just got some high winds and a lot of rain. "If I remember correctly there were a couple of twisters that came down in Nicollet and Carver, but none were near me. I didn't think any touched down anywhere in Hennepin though."

"No, it turned out nothing did, but Carver's right next door and with as bad as the storm was and all I figured better safe than sorry so when the tornado sirens went off I headed over to the library to make sure everything was battened down. I went in the back way, same as I always did and when I turned around after resetting the alarm there was this… presence. I swear, I looked up the backstairs and sitting on the landing before the half set of stairs to the main floor was this grey, shadowy thing staring down at me. There was this low hiss and rumble noise that seemed to be coming from the whole building and the floor started shaking and I have to admit, I've never been more terrified in my life. In fact I was so scared I dropped my umbrella and then suddenly it was like the entire atmosphere changed and there was this happy chirrup noise and the thing darted away."

Yeah, I had to admit that was pretty strange. I'd probably have freaked out too if it had been me. Then something suddenly occurred to me, "The storms were on a Sunday, weren't they? You said you're only open three days a week, is that a day you're usually closed?"

"Yes, we're open Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, but I don't see… oh!"

"Exactly, all it knew was that someone was coming in on a day no one usually does; it must have thought you were a threat until it recognized you. So what happened next?" I ask, because I assumed something else must have for her to be calling me, especially this long after the storm.

"Nothing that day. I stayed through the worst of the storm and other than the lights flickering once or twice everything was normal. I almost convinced myself I'd imagined the whole thing. I went to work as usually on Tuesday morning and when I unlocked the door there it was, waiting just inside the entranceway. It was less amorphous blob like and more of a … shadowy cat shaped thing. It kind of just stood there, staring at me for a minute and then made this little trill questioning noise. I stared back- I didn't know what the hell to do, it's not every day you come face to face with some kind of otherworldly creature, you know? But it didn't seem like it wanted to hurt me or anything, it was more like… it was concerned?"

"Like it thought you might be mad at it."

"Yes! So, I just said 'I expect you to follow the library's rules and that includes not shaking the building again' in my best no-nonsense voice and went about my normal routine. Everything's sort of gone back to normal since then, or as normal as things ever get in the library," she added with a laugh.

"I hear you on that one," I said, laughing too.

"But, when I'm there by myself, I sometimes see… something, just out of the corner of my eye. Nothing else has changed though. The pens still wind up on the floor in the mornings and books are still knocked over, but now that I know it's there, I've been trying to figure out what it is and whether or not it's okay. One of my research jaunts led me to some replies Clark made on one of the Listservs I subscribe to and it made me think that maybe my library wasn't the only one that had a… permanent patron in residence. So, long story short, I got in contact with him and after a few back-and-forths he suggested I call you."

"Okay, first off, I have to say you are definitely dealing with something a little beyond my area of expertise, but that's okay, I'm sure we can figure it out. And, secondly, I guess I have to ask, what's your goal here?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, our permanent patrons here are completely welcome, is that the case with…."

"Harvey," she said quickly.

"Excuse me?"

"I've been calling it Harvey. I suppose it's not a six foot tall rabbit, but it is a larger than normal sort of cat.... thing and it's definitely mischievous." 

"Right, so, do you mind having Harvey staying at Roosevelt, or do want him to leave?" 

"In a way it's kind of nice having someone, something, to talk to when I'm here by myself so I guess I want him to stay? But, not if he's actually dangerous, of course. I mean," her voice went really low and kind of breathy, like she was covering the phone to try not to be overheard. "All he has to do is to eat three or four children and there'd be the most appalling publicity."

Quoting Gremlins 2? Okay, I liked this woman. "The way you talked it sounded like it has been there a while already. How long do you think you it's been? The entire time since the remodel?"

I took the time while Martha paused, probably thinking my question through, to rifle around behind the desk for the notes I took while doing research on Jo and Pip. Since that had basically amounted to a whole lot of nothing, there wasn't much to find and nothing that could have related to Harvey. Oh well.

"You know, I think you're right. Everything was so chaotic when we were first starting up, but I distinctly remember asking Ibrahim when he came in for training if he thought the floors might have been done unevenly since we were always finding pens on the floor and that was only a few weeks after we officially reopened."

"Well, if it hasn't eaten anyone by now," I began, before letting the sentence hang in the air. 

"Then it does seem unlikely Harvey will suddenly start. I hadn't even considered that, you're right. What a relief."

"Now that the eating people problem's settled I guess the mischief one is next. Are Harvey's antics acceptable? Is there any way you can mitigate them? Is he acting out because he's hungry?"

"I hadn't even considered that. What do weird ghost catlike things even eat? Do they even need to eat? I suppose if he's been here for years then he's been finding whatever he needs on his own, right?"

"It would seem that way."

"Maybe he's bored? Can I ask… do you do anything special for your- Does yours have a name?"

"We have two, Jo and Pip. They eat mostly candy - the sugary kind, not so much the chocolate stuff - and like it when we read to them every night."

I could practically hear her internal 'awww' when I said that. All librarians loved hearing about avid readers, no matter what shape or size they came in.

"Maybe I should try doing that; I haven't read aloud in ages. I don't think he's interested in snacks though. I don't recall the Halloween or Holiday treats ever going missing and I'm pretty sure I would have noticed that."

"It's possible Harvey doesn't need to eat, or gets whatever he needs some other way."

"That's true. Oh! Look at the time, I'm so sorry, I called after hours, didn't I?"

"Technically, but it's fine, seriously, not a problem at all." Considering there hadn't been a peep out of the basement the entire time there was a good chance Jo and Pip were still cavorting around outside and had lost track of time themselves. 

"No, I really appreciate it. I just needed to talk to someone who would understand, you know? And you've really taken a load off my mind."

"Well, I was happy to help. Give me a call anytime you want to talk and we'll exchange notes, okay?"

"I will, thank you, Cassie. I think I'm going to stop by the pet store on my way home to see what kind of toys they have there. I can't believe I'm saying this, but maybe if Harvey has other things to play with he'll leave the pens alone? I mean, if he's anything like the cats I've known probably not, but I can always hope, right?"

Trying not to laugh I agreed, "Right. Bye, Martha, and good luck!"

"Thanks, I think I'm going to need it. Good night!"

I hung up the phone and grabbed a couple of packages of skittles, a brush, and a copy of The Pushcart War and headed to the basement. Jo and Pip were probably curious to know how phase one of the Pea Shooter Campaign worked out for the peddlers and I couldn't wait to get home to tell Mom the news there were a lot more Library Guardians out there then we'd realized.

  
  


_"I've wrestled with reality for 35 years... and I'm happy to state I finally won out over it."_ ~Elwood P. Dowd, **Harvey**


End file.
